


the reason why my insides are so swollen

by strangetowns



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: The world was so impossibly vast, and his life was so, so small in comparison. Time was so relentless in the way it moved forward, all his thoughts and worries and fears spinning and spinning around him like an infinite storm. And for what? He would like to see outside of it all, if he had the chance. He would like to step outside of time and know a little of all the lives he didn’t lead, all the people he couldn’t be. It would be nice to feel part of something that was bigger than himself. It would be nice not to wonder, for once, when it would all fall apart around him.-Josh has a lot of feelings. Sometimes he doesn't really know what to do with them. Sometimes he doesn't have to. Or: a post-season 5 character study.
Relationships: Nora Machwitz/Josh Zimmermann
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	the reason why my insides are so swollen

**Author's Note:**

> is this my first m/f fic on ao3???? holy shit lol
> 
> anyway yes hi hello druck new gen has taken over my entire life and i'm not sorry about it. I've been wanting to experiment with something more character study-esque for a while and i guess now's when i decided to do it?? Thank you to [Crystal](https://pronouncingitwang.tumblr.com/) for their excellent beta reading skills, and thank you to "[Ghosting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx847_zeiss)" by Freelance Whales for the title of this fic. Hope you enjoy!

There were times like this one where Nora got this faraway look in her eyes - like there was somewhere else she wanted to be or maybe in her head she was already there. Each time he tried not to let it scare him too badly - tried not to think, this time was it, this was the moment he’d lose her for good, this was the time he’d have to watch her slip through his fingers like smoke, like so much sand. She was her own person, she could go wherever she wanted. She didn’t need his permission. She didn’t need anything from him. 

Yet something inside him still burned to ask - _can you take me with you?_ Please, he’d say, please don’t leave me behind. I don’t care where you go, I’ll follow you to the moon, I’ll follow you anywhere. Take me to heaven or take me to hell because if you left me here alone it wouldn’t even make a difference; let me come with you because I barely survived it the last time you didn’t and the thing is I don’t know if I can do it again.

This time she didn’t stay gone for too long. When she blinked and met his eyes, she smiled, and it was close to the most perfect thing he’d ever seen.

“What are you thinking about over there?” she asked him.

He smiled back at her. It was easy.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

Which wasn’t a lie.

-

He understood the feeling a bit, though - or, he thought he did anyway. He felt his own version of it too sometimes, this lonely and faraway call tugging somewhere behind his navel to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t here. He didn’t hate his life. In fact he thought himself quite lucky, all things considered. Good grades in school, friends who had stood by his side for as long as he could remember, a mother who would always give him a home. A girl who made his heart somersault in his chest if he so much as looked at her across a crowded room; a girl who, against all odds, met his eyes, and felt the same.

Still. The world was so impossibly vast, and his life was so, so small in comparison. Time was so relentless in the way it moved forward, all his thoughts and worries and fears spinning and spinning around him like an infinite storm. And for what? He would like to see outside of it all, if he had the chance. He would like to step outside of time and know a little of all the lives he didn’t lead, all the people he couldn’t be. It would be nice to feel part of something that was bigger than himself. It would be nice not to wonder, for once, when it would all fall apart around him.

-

He’d lost his mother in a store when he was five years old. He couldn’t remember what store they went to or what they were doing in there. He couldn’t even remember how he’d lost her to begin with. He did remember the way it had felt, though, to turn around and realize he couldn’t see his mother anywhere. The overhead fluorescent lights too bright, disorienting; his clothes feeling too loose for him, all of a sudden, scratchy and irritating and horrible against his skin; the ground falling from under his feet as he ran and ran and ran, searching for a woman he couldn’t find.

A pair of strangers had helped him, in the end. Their faces were fuzzy and indistinct in his memory now, as were their voices and the words they’d said to him. All they’d left him with was the vague impression of kindness as they’d waited patiently with him until his mother had turned the corner, breathlessly near tears, and he’d run to her, clutching the hem of her shirt with all the strength he’d had in his tiny fists and burying his face in her shoulder when she crouched down to embrace him. He’d refused to let go the rest of the time they were at the store, in fact didn’t relax his grip until they were safely back in the car and his mother had turned on the stereo to a song he no longer remembered save for the soothing feeling it had left him in his chest.

But his hand in the fabric of her shirt - the feeling of clinging to something he desperately didn’t want to lose again. He remembered that better than anything else.

-

Some days were harder than others. Sometimes Nora didn’t want him around - “I don’t want you to see me like that, you understand,” she murmured into his hair on one of the better nights, “I know there’s nothing to be ashamed of but it still fucking sucks, lying there and knowing there’s not a thing either of us can do about it.” Those days she needed to be by herself he’d text Yara and they’d go to the park or play video games in her living room because he always seemed to need the opposite - quietly hated the feeling of being alone with his worries and all the yearning in his bottomless heart.

Sometimes she let him stay, and he understood, better than he wanted to, why there were times she couldn’t stand the thought of him watching her. He’d never admit it out loud but it hurt him too to see her like that, to know she was suffering and the best they could do was wait out the worst of it - that there was nothing else _to_ do. Sometimes she asked him to hold her and he would, cradling her in his arms like she was something precious, something breakable. Sometimes she didn’t want to be touched at all, didn’t want to be reminded that she couldn’t feel it; those nights he’d lie next to her and watch her try to fall asleep, a tiny furrow creasing her brows as her eyelashes fluttered, and tried not to let their knees bump up against each other too often.

Together they learned, slowly, the things that helped and the things that didn’t. The times his touch would ground her and the times it wouldn’t; the times that his words would be a helpful distraction and the times that they both needed silence. They both learned how to live in it, how to turn it from something oppressive and suffocating to something kind and gentle. They learned that silence was easier to tame when it was shared.

So there were times it was easier and times it was harder, and all the time it was worth it. The mornings after the harder nights she’d wake up and smile softly at him, and it never seemed to matter if the sun was out or not. Either way, he’d be just as warm.

Besides, some things were even harder than this. He knew that all too well.

-

Yara had called him about five minutes after he’d gotten back home, that day Nora had asked if they could be friends and his chest had slowly split open like a glacier cracking in two.

“So?” Yara had said, no greeting or preamble, clearly expecting an answer to a question she didn’t have to ask.

There had been this stifling heaviness lodged in the pit of his stomach, a buzzing heat behind his eyes like if he moved even a little bit he’d burst into tears. In that moment he’d wanted nothing more than to turn to stone, rooted to this very place - silent, unmoving; a person who wasn’t real. Sometimes he got so fucking sick of feeling so much.

“Josh,” Yara had said, and he’d closed his eyes and told her everything.

After he’d stopped talking, there had been a very long silence. He’d half-expected her to berate him, verbally slap him upside the head for being such a fucking idiot. It would have hurt but it would have been what he deserved. What kind of messed-up wreck of a person begged someone he cared about to hurt him? It wasn’t normal, and worse it was selfish, perhaps the most selfish thing he had ever asked of her; still, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying it.

“Oh, Josh,” Yara had said, voice unbearably soft. “You deserve better than that.”

Somehow that had hurt more.

-

Today they lay in the winter sun. It was bright and cold and kind of unspeakably perfect. Yara had her arm thrown over her eyes. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. He wouldn’t be surprised.

The wind was a quiet friend. He lifted his hand above his face, opened his palm to the sky. In a different world maybe he’d be able to touch it.

Maybe in that world he would have all the time he could ever need.

Nora was at her mother’s house today for lunch. She didn’t talk about her mother all too often but he had the impression that things were going tentatively well for them. He hoped today went well, too. He hoped she would say everything that she needed to say, and hear everything that she needed to hear. It was no less than what she deserved.

Yara shifted slightly, the toe of her boot nudging lightly against his sneaker. “Stop that. You’re thinking so loud.”

Well. He couldn’t say he was surprised by that, either.

“Make me,” he said.

He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Take a guess,” he said.

A brief pause, and then a groan.

“You’re hopeless,” Yara said. “Complete head over heels dumbass, that’s you. You disgust me.”

He dug his elbow into her arm in retaliation. “Man, I can’t wait until you fall in love with some beautiful girl who makes you lose all your chill. I’m gonna give you _so much shit_.”

There was a beat of silence.

“So it’s love, then.”

He opened his mouth, found he had nothing to say, and closed it again.

“You miss her, don’t you?”

They’d seen each other the night before. They would see each other again in a few hours.

“Stupid of me, I know,” he said.

“Stop that.” Her voice was sharp, almost stern. He could tell that this time she meant it.

So this time he didn’t answer.

She sighed. “You’re allowed to miss someone you care about, you know,” she said. “You’re allowed to feel things.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words, and it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words from her.

“Sometimes I think my feelings are too big to carry,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I wish I could throw them all away.”

“Don’t do that,” Yara said.

He couldn’t help but laugh at her deadpan tone. “Why not?”

“Your feelings are what make you you,” Yara said.

She turned her face, looked him right in the eye. That was how he knew she was serious about this - more serious than she was about most things.

“And I think she’d help you carry them,” Yara said. “If you let her.”

In the end, he didn’t have anything to say to that, either.

-

He’d go silent for whole days back in primary school. Sometimes he didn’t even know what his mouth would do until it did it, if it would scream and scream until someone had to stop him or if it would stay steadfastly shut until he choked on the quiet. Times like those it almost felt like he didn’t have any control over it. These days he still felt that way, a little.

Teachers and friends would try to coax him into speaking. They would try everything - cajoling, berating, pleading. Eventually they would give up, though, they always did. He always figured in those times they thought he didn’t have anything to say.

The truth was, though, in times like those he simply had too much.

-

He had this tendency to cling to things too tightly, was the thing. Like he’d run out of time if he didn’t. Time for what, he never knew. But holding on - that was something he’d done his whole life. In the months after he finally understood his father wasn’t coming back, when he listened to his father’s tapes over and over again until one day he realized he remembered the words to the songs better than he remembered the sound of his own father’s voice. In the summer before his first year of high school when he hadn’t hung out with anyone but Yara until she gently reminded him they were going to different schools and he wasn’t always going to be able to rely on her company. He didn’t like to throw out old sweaters even when they didn’t fit anymore. His favorite songs he’d save on his phone and listen to on repeat until they started playing in his dreams, in the gaps of silence that surrounded his words - all his waking hours.

If he wasn’t careful he’d choke the life out of the things he loved. He had nightmares about it, stopwatches hitting zero and lightbulbs smashing against the floor and flowers withering into nothingness. But what else could he do? How else could he live with all of these fucking feelings that filled him up from his toes to the top of his spine? The only thing he knew how to do was hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on to love, to life; hold on to every scrap of happiness the universe was kind enough to throw his way. Hold on because if he let go he’d have nothing to anchor him to this earth, nothing to keep him from spinning out into outer space. Which scared him, somehow; this world was the only place he’d ever known.

-

Nora’s feet pressed against his leg, her toes so cold against his skin. “Put some socks on,” he’d said earlier, poking her in the side, and she’d stuck her tongue out at him and called him gross. But she was cold now, burying her face into his chest and shaking her head. She didn’t want to get up and turn up the heat. Which he couldn’t begrudge her for; he didn’t want to either.

“Aren’t you cold too? Mister I can’t go to sleep without at least three blankets wrapped around me like a cocoon.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I don’t need to whine about it.”

“Rude!” She dug her feet harder into his shin. “I don’t whine!”

He laughed. “Sorry.”

Nora’s arms wrapped around his waist. She tilted her head back, just slightly. Their eyes met.

“Even if you don’t need to whine about it,” she said, “you can if you want to. You know that, right?”

He chewed his lip. “It’s just the cold,” he said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Maybe not,” Nora said. “But I still want to hear about it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she echoed. “I want to hear everything you have to say.”

He let the words sink in. It felt good to let them do that. “That might take a long time.”

She smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ve got time.”

He glanced down.

“What if the things I have to say are stupid?” he said.

What if she decided she didn’t want to hear them, after all?

“No, she said softly, shaking her head. “Never. None of the things you have to say are stupid.”

“How do you know?” His voice came out sounding uncertain and shaky. It was a little embarrassing but he couldn’t help it. He had only ever known how to wear his heart on his sleeve; he didn’t know where else to keep it.

“They’re yours,” she said.

He swallowed. “So?”

Nora held his gaze. They were so warm and steady, her eyes. He was grateful for it.

“God, Josh,” she said, and now her voice was shaking too. “I wish you knew how fucking good you are.”

She held his face as she kissed him, fingers curling into his hair. In this quiet darkness, pinned under the warmth of her mouth, it was hard not to believe her. He wanted to believe her, he realized. He wanted to listen to every word she had to give him, wanted to believe she would only ever give him truth. It was all he had ever tasted on her mouth.

So maybe she was right that they had time, maybe she was right that they had time right now. It was less that time had stopped and more that it had stopped mattering. In Nora’s bed he often found he didn’t want to fall asleep. He didn’t want this feeling to ever end. He didn’t want to lose the seconds and minutes to his dreams.

But maybe it wasn’t a loss at all. When he closed his eyes, there had to be a time he would open them again. Tomorrow morning waited for him. Tomorrow night was an inevitability. As were all the nights after that.

The world spun on and on under their feet, and he was glad not to be left behind.

They pulled away. He had so much to say to her, so many words his chest could burst like a balloon. His throat was tight at the revelation. All of these things to say and he knew exactly where he wanted to start. A big thing, arguably the biggest thing that lived inside his heart. So big he just didn’t know if he could carry it by himself anymore.

“Josh,” Nora said, the tip of her finger skimming against his cheek. “What is it?”

“I love you,” he whispered.

She cradled his face in both her hands. Her eyes were soft; a comfort.

“I love you, too,” she said, gentle and sure.

So maybe he didn’t have to, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> -druck can try to convince me that Yara isn't a wlw if they want but in my heart of hearts I will know the truth
> 
> -idk if anyone here is particularly concerned about this but just in case - for those waiting for an update to my davenzi WIP, it is coming soon! Just maybe not this week lol. But I am working on it!
> 
> That's all i've got for now, i think. Find me on [Tumblr](https://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Canonlyanxious) if you want. Thank you for reading!


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